And this is also why I say that the preposterous article written by the ridiculous doctor about how your mortgage could be making you sick was a load of condescending, gratuitous mansplaining crap. He purported to understand a woman's lot without understanding that a man's defence that he is working long hours is crap. He raved about how women are responsible for making the school lunches for the kids, yadda, yadda, and topped it off with an expression that I find gratuitous "see that they get some breakfast into them before they go." Hello, kids are not engines on an assembly plant where they come up to a bowser and a little petrol is put into them and they start them just before passing quality control; kids are humans who want to actually sit and eat their breakfast and they'll want breakfast because they're hungry, not because someone wants to see that they get some into them! If anything, this ridiculous doctor seemed to be making the case for women to return to domestic drudgery without advertently making the case for it.
Women have a greater share of the emotional labour, but, I remember, long ago, when I had a girlfriend, if I didn't do the washing and some other tasks around the house, they didn't get done, as she wanted to be a lady of leisure, who went to the gym, had coffee with friends and went to the movies.
If a woman and a man are co-habiting, and raising kids between them, a woman should be able to trust that if she asks the man to do it that it does get done. When I say, if she asks a man to do it, I don’t mean that a woman should have to do his agreed tasks, I mean, say the woman has to go somewhere and she asks her male partner to put the washing on the line, even if it’s not one of his regular tasks, she should be able to rely upon him to do it. My mother knew a woman once, who asked her husband if he’d put the washing on the line, and he replied, “No, that’s women’s work.” Hello, putting out the washing is a survival skill not a gender role. My long-ago ex-girlfriend wanted to be able to hire a cleaner, but that was more because she considered those tasks to be beneath her.
Most recently, I had the situation where my brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephew were visiting, and my sister-in-law was helping my niece on the toilet, and my nephew was hanging around because he wanted mummy. My sister-in-law asked him to go away. My brother was placing bets on football teams on his phone and my sister-in-law was trying to get him to help, but he wouldn’t. I took my nephew away and told him why his mum wanted him to leave, and my sister-in-law thanked me. I won’t say my brother is selfish, he’s not, and he’s not a bad father, but when my sister-in-law is about, he sits back and lets her do all the work. She even said to him, as he doesn’t work Mondays, that she doesn’t mind what he does, as long as when she comes home from work, the kids are bathed and fed, the house is tidy and things are ready.